Tweaking turned off power supply fan...

[batman697]

Hello,

I have a big problem and I hope somebody can help me. You guys are going to hate me for 2 reasons
1. newbie jumping in with a question
2. I tweaked my system without experience.

I was trying to find a way to control my video card fan (nvidia ti 4600) so I installed ntune. I foolishly played around with the program and then uninstalled it. Today my computer starts randomly restarting. I look at the back - power supply and case fans aren't running!!! Argh...anyone know how to fix this? Reinstall windows? bios? Believe me, I know how stupid this was....
Power supply: antec true 380s
mboard:K7N2 with AMD

Thanks for any help.
-Matt

[chrisbliss18]

Let's clarify some things.

When you say that the power supply and case fans aren't running, are you talking about the power supply fan isn't running or the power supply itself isn't running?

Is the system running normally but without the fans turning on like they should?

Do the fans turn on when the system boots but idle down or stop later on?

Have you done anything else other than just mess around with nTune? Things that I am looking for are: making any hardware changes/adjustments (basically touching anything inside your case) or changing BIOS settings.

[batman697]

-The power supplly fan isn't running. and neither is the case fan when it is connected to the "fan only" power cable.

-Everything else besides the fans appear to be normal.

-The fans do nothing. Don't start up and even nudge. I plugged the case fan into an extra power cable so that one is now on.

-Another stupid thing I remember doing: I had the case fan unplugged last night when I was working on decreasing noise and while the computer was on, I plugged the case fan into the "fan only" power cable from the supply. I remember the case fan powering up but I don't know if the power supply fan was working when I turned the computer off last night. Could I have blown a fuse? I also took the video card in and out of the machine to look at that little fan and re-connectd some usb cords on the mboard that weren't connected but I don't think that caused any problems. I didn't touch the bios yesterday.

Thanks....

-Matt

[chrisbliss18]

Quick question. Did you plug the fan into that cable while the system was running?

[batman697]

Yep, I was that naive...should have known better

....I thought that's what I said in my 2nd post.

Quick question. Did you plug the fan into that cable while the system was running?

[chrisbliss18]

I just wanted to make sure.

You should never plug or unplug anything from a power supply while the system is in operation. I'm not sure exactly how your power supply is set up, but since it has a molex labeled for fan use, I would suppose that power cable shares the same circuitry as the power supply fan. It's very possible that when you plugged the fan in, you blew that circuit. You will probably have to get a new power supply. You might be lucky and find a fuse in there that can be replaced, but do not open up that power supply before you ask us for advice since doing so is very dangerous.

[batman697]

Thanks for the assistance.

My neighbor and I opened it up and couldn't find any fuses unfortunately.

I tried a system restore to no avail as well.

Looks like I'll be buying a new one. Doh!

[chrisbliss18]

If you really feel adventurous (and have a death wish ;)), you could destroy one of the working cables to wire directly to the power supply fan. It would possibly damage your PSU further if not done properly, but it would work.

[batman697]

Hah! Interesting idea. I'm surprised my neighbor didn't try that. Oddly enough, he did cut the wires to the fan because he wanted to see if that was causing the drain he was measuring (he was only measuring 11.5 V).

I've never been stupid enough to hook and unhook stuff while the power is on...until last night. Guess I learned my lesson. Now I'm going to go sell 6 dvds to fund the new purchase so I don't feel as bad about making a $60 mistake.

So, are you nearly 100% sure it was the hookup while powered on that caused my problem? After all my searching today, I can't imagine that software would have powered off the fan but it's really hard to lose that splinter of hope that will save me $60. hah.

[chrisbliss18]

There are very few power supplies that allow their fan speed to be controlled by the motherboard, and even fewer that allow software to modify their speed. Even if your power supply is one of these rare beasts, you would not be able to shut off the fan using either of these methods. Even if you were able to shut it off using one of these methods, the fan would still spin up when first started since the system wouldn't have been able to give it the instruction to stop the fan yet. Given this information, I have no doubt that the failure of the power supply fan has everything to do with you plugging a device into it while running and has nothing to do with your tinkering around with the settings for your video card.

The biggest piece of conclussive evidence is the fact that the fan that was connected to the power supply also stopped working. This fan didn't stop working because the fan was fried (since it worked when you plugged it into a different plug); rather, it wasn't working because that power supply connection wasn't receiving a current anymore. The only reasons a power supply connection would totally cease supplying a current is that one or more of the wires became damaged (which doesn't seem to be the case here), the power supply is off (not the case), or the current-supplying circuitry became damaged (which can happen when you connect/disconnect devices while the power supply is in operation).

As much as I would like to give you a ray of hope for your power supply, I have no reason to believe that your power supply is not damaged. As I stated before, you could try to make some fixes to it so the fan works again, but this would degrade the reliability of the power supply since you will be changing the way it normally works and run the risk of damaging the unit further.

[batman697]

Great comments. Thanks for your help today!